


Her Monster

by Jameson9101322



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3735790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameson9101322/pseuds/Jameson9101322
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A  young, tortured soul ripped apart by dark magic haunts the streets and citizens of Silent Hill. Betrayed by her mother and alone in the darkness, she finds companionship in a silent and powerful servant, conjured from the cursed town to be her steady hammer of justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Travis was gone and Alessa was lonely. They weren't friends in the strictest sense of the word, he hadn't helped her assemble the Flauros by choice, but his involvement gave her the power to strike back against her mother and the members of the Order. Without him their evil, Satanic goals would have been reached, and she had to thank him for his help and being on her side.

Now, neither alive nor dead, Alessa's projected manifestation wandered through the light and dark sides of Silent Hill. She could do almost anything now, but felt no pleasure or satisfaction in her power. The half of her that could feel pleasure was laying in a tiny infant body by the side of the road waiting for someone to pick her up. 

Alessa wandered to the burned out house of her ancestors where her family had lived for generations. Her mother, Dahlia, had sacrificed the place in an attempt to control her daughter's psychic powers. It had been a failure, and Alessa's charred body now lay mummified in bandages in the basement of Alchemilla Hospital still holding the infant fetus of a demon god inside her. Alessa felt so used, so misguided and unloved. She wished Travis could have stayed with her instead of returning to his life. 

She wandered along the streets of the Silent Hill, sorrow falling on her like the soot and snow from the sky. The place was a ruin set to smolder by her own violent power the night before. It lay quiet, now, like a dead man washed up on the side of the lake. In the street, charred carcasses of monsters vanished in tatters back to Hell, born of the dark visions within Travis's mind and now useless without him present to torment. She now held the power to create monsters as well, but it did not make her happy. She considered that she'd never be happy again, and she wished her other half a better fate.

Alessa's anger churned a slow boil. She wanted to punish those who had made her this way. From conception she was a tool for their wicked power-mongering. She never had the opportunity to be a normal girl.

Half-minded in her wanderings, she soon found herself in butchery. 

The kitchen was small, draped in the blood of dead monsters dissected by its chief tenant and splattered with the gore of battle. The Butcher, a monster himself, lay on the floor, his face half masked by an irregular metal plate and his own cleaver stuck ironically into his back by Travis as a lesson learned the hard way. She considered his shape as he lay in a pool of his own blood, feeling strangely drawn to it.

The monster had taken the form of a serial-killer Travis remembered from news articles and books. It was muscled and strong with a bloody butcher's apron and over-sized knife. In direct order from its inspiration, the monster had taken other monsters apart without concern, splitting them down the middle and loosing their guts all over the floor. She saw in its dead body the shadow of something promising. 

A monster disguised as a man, familiar enough to victims that they might plead to it for mercy, able to deceive them into thinking their cries could be heard before delivering death in one heartless blow. A knife so large and heavy it could run them through in one swing. A mask to hide its face. Blind justice. The very incarnation of her desire to see the wicked punished for their sins.

The Butcher began to dissipate; he wasn't real after all, he had no soul, his body was being summoned back to Hell without complaint. She watched with a sinking heart. She wanted to stare at his ruined back longer and feel like there was something else as empty in this world as she was. Perhaps she could call him back.

She reached out her hand to the vanishing body, focusing her dark powers on the place where it lay. The ground around it flaked and peeled back as blood dripped from the walls and red fire burned from deep below. The darkness heard her, reached in and replied with what her half-heart most desired.

Blind Justice it was to be. The shreds of the body rose with dust and sinew from the dark realm below the town, constructing the shape of a nine-foot man. Like the Butcher, it wore a smock stained with blood, its chest and arms were bare and muscular, skin glistening like a dead man's stretched across blue veins and burst capillaries. It held a knife that was longer and heavier than the cleaver of its predecessor, and in place of a half-mask, a ruddy metal pyramid caged its head.

The monster stood facing her. It was a gift from beyond, an interpreted answer to her request. She released her hold on the space and stared up at the massive figure as it drew in the first breath of life. The kitchen around them became pale and light once more. 

The monster did not move, holding its massive knife in its left hand, the right curled into a fist. Alessa couldn't see eyes on its massive head, but felt it looking at her. She was small before it, but not afraid. This was a hell-beast meant only for the deserving.

“Come.” She said. “You're mine.”

The girl reached up and took the Monster's clenched hand. Its fist loosened at her touch and allowed her childlike hand to take hold. Alessa tugged. With great effort it stepped stiffly toward her, knife grating the ground behind. She walked the creature out of the building and through the fog, staring up at it and never straying. Before long they'd arrived at her desired destination.

The altar, the sight where her burned body had been laid the night before, chalk markings, blood and wax left as evidence of the evil conducted the night before. In her mind she replayed every awful moment, and thanks to her part in his creation, the Monster knew too.

“I want you to help me get them.” She said to him.

The Monster twisted his grip on the handle of the knife, his breathing hoarser like a ferocious dog on the end of its chain. His limited ego did not entertain feelings of injustice or need for revenge. He was seething with carnal anticipation and asking simply 'who first'?

Alessa squeezed the fingers of his empty hand with satisfaction. “My mother.”


	2. Chapter 2

Alessa hated her mother with all the heart she had. The girl had begged for closeness, cried for it in life, and in exchange she got occult nonsense and torture. There were four people on her revenge list; Dr. Michael Kaufmann the director of Archemilla Hospital; a man with a sneering voice she’d heard but not seen; Leonard Wolfe, a deluded and crafty man she recalled hiding from when he visited her house; and her mother Dahlia Gillespie. 

Those four were responsible for her current state, the sequence of events leading up to her present beginning with birth.

She could sense them in the town. They were close to her, wherever they were, her physical body could hear their voices speaking. It was a prayer, some sort of enchantment. They were trying to summon her soul back to her shell. 

They didn’t have to bother; she was coming anyway, dragging her new pet with her. The scraping of the great knife on the pavement echoed like screams off the shrouded walls of the abandoned buildings as they marched down Crighton Street following the call of the chant. Those silly mortals, if only they knew they were singing their own nocturne.

She could sense bodies moving in the mist, not monsters, people, refugees of the fire the night before. She sensed children she knew from her class at school. Some were the same kids who’d called her a witch and thrown books at her. It was unlucky for them that she was now without compassion. They’d have their time. She looked fondly back to the Monster, adoring him from below. She had an instrument to beat punishment into people and she could hardly wait to use it.

The Monster was also teaching her patience. His slow gait was a chore, but she didn’t want to leave him. She was skeptical about whether he could find his way without her help. She was following her ears and intuition, and as far as she could tell, he had neither.

The town told her they were at the hospital. It figured. Alchemilla was the only place where her skinless body could receive the care it needed to stay ‘healthy’. She could feel the pain of the burns still even though she was apart from it. The chant about her ears continued on, the power of the spell growing stronger as it progressed. She felt her body screaming for her return, shuddering, shouting to be reunited. If she consented, she’d be trapped in a horrible blood-drenched pain-fueled nightmare unable to escape until her soul was whole again. But it would be all right, she was strong and had the dark forces of Silent Hill’s mystic history on her side. Perhaps she could use this to her advantage. 

“Stop here.” She told the Monster, who obeyed. It would be ridiculous to climb the stairs down to the basement or fit her overlarge friend in the elevator. She was confident she could teleport them using her new powers. If she rode the pull of the incantation, it would take them extremely close. She squeezed the Monster’s fingers tight. “Hold on to me.”

His hand closed around hers, massive in comparison and covered in grime. She felt the strength of his arm as if it was an extension of herself and using that connection, pulled the two of them into the darkness.

They reappeared in a shiny white hallway. Her monster was a stark contrast their new location, the hospital purity dimmed and cracked around them to compensate. The staff had been cleared of this floor, the only human presence left was behind a locked set of double doors at the very end of the hall. Alessa could feel the nightmare raging on the other side, and it only made her powers stronger. It was time to bring the horror to life. 

With hellish noise the walls stripped of paint. The tile floor buckled and sank into bloody grating, the doors at the end rusted and cracked. The prayer inside stopped.

“She’s here!”

“Keep going! Finish the incantation!”

Alessa let go of her monster and rose from the ground, the dark power heating and rippling the air. The window glass shattered as she took the cries of her body and channeled them audibly into the basement. The torment of Alessa Gillespie shook the very walls. Alessa’s half-soul floated forward. She stretched her hand and blew away the doors of the hospital room revealing the four sinners holding hands. They recoiled with horror at the sight.

“Alessa!” Dahlia’s voice cried from behind a black veil. “Return to your body this instant!” 

Alessa narrowed her blackened eyes on the woman with unearthly malice. “No.”

“Return and this will all be over.” Her mother promised. “It is your destiny to be the holy mother of our god Samael, don’t you understand how important your job is? What an honor? The mother of a GOD, Alessa, you will remake the world!”

The girl seethed. “Die.”

The three men in the room panicked as the floor fell out beneath them, leaving them suspended on a grating over a fiery grinder. Tendrils of blood leaked up from the bedposts and grabbed for them. Dr. Kaufmann backed, frozen into the corner. Wolfe and the third man ran from the room and right into the killzone of the monster in the hall. 

The executioner swung his sword with one arm. The instrument, previously too heavy to carry, was nothing but a rusted flash in the air as it sliced cross-wise with the speed and precision of a chef’s blade. It split the sneering-man open across the middle. Wolfe sprang backward, his face white and sprayed with blood. The wounded man clutched at his spilling guts and staggered before the Monster lunged and finished him off with a single stab through the chest. 

Alessa followed Wolfe into the room, the three remaining Orderlies trapped there with her and her husk-like body, the scraping grate of knife on floor blocking the only exit. Alessa slid her mother a look of cold retribution that told her who was next.

“You can’t kill me.” Dahlia told her with rasping clout. “I am your mother.” 

“Not I.” Alessa hissed. The grating grew louder

Wolfe braced himself against Alessa’s gurney staring wide-eyed to her mother. “Use it!” He shouted. “Use it, Young’s dead!”

“You leave me no choice, Alessa!” Dahlia shouted. “If you will not cooperate, I will force you to do as I say!” She whipped from her gown a pyramidal artifact, the Flauros, it glowed and twisted with paradigm-shifting power. It was the very object that had given Alessa her metaphysical form, and upon its re-activation, she felt all her power slip away. The walls stopped peeling, the ground stopped burning, the scream and suction of the body threatened to overtake her. Covering her ears, she sank to the floor and felt herself withering away. 

“It’s working!” Kaufmann yelled in triumph. 

“Submit!” Dahlia commanded. “All this; your dark world, your monsters, your terror; it’s all vanishing. You’ve lost control, now give in and do as I say!”

“No!” Alessa cried, deafened by the shrieking notes of her own inaudible screams. “Monster!”

There was a sudden flash. Dahlia shrieked. The wide blade of the great knife missed and lodged in the wall near where her outstretched arm had been. The nine-foot creature reached down and took Alessa up in his mighty arms. 

Dahlia bared her teeth like a snake. “How did it-!?” but the Monster rose and ripped the knife from the wall before she could finish. She backed away as it shore the veil from beneath her nose and clipped Wolfe in the shoulder, splattering his blood across the wall.

Alessa clung to her monster’s chest, her head pressed hard to the underside of the raw metal pyramid in an attempt to retreat from the mental and physical pain. It wasn’t far enough. She wanted out. With all her might and will and half her seven year-old heart she wanted out!

In a wisp of shadow and brimstone she and her monster stood again outside Alchemilla hospital, the shrieking terror echoing within, twisting and changing the place inside to a den of mental anguish. 

That was too close. Alessa’s spirits sank deep within her half-soul. As long as her mother had the Flauros, not even the darkness beneath Silent Hill could save her from the nightmare. It was just like before. She buried her head in the monster’s clammy shoulder and cried. 

He dropped the point of the knife to the ground, turned, and dragged it back up Crighton Street.


	3. Chapter 3

Alessa lived in a well of hopelessness. She had lost the part of her that could rebound from the grim reality of her circumstance along with her ability to laugh and sing and sympathize with others. It was somewhere she didn't know where, turning nearly a year old in the care of strangers she'd never met. All that was left in this place was the sick reality that as long as the Order possessed the Flauros, her revenge plan would never be complete.

Of course as long as she was fragmented like this, the god growing in her body could not be born, but even that bright side was not enough. She wanted to attack. There were still three names on her list.

Alessa sat on the swing set outside Midwich Elementary school, moping and swinging herself back and forth slightly with the tip of her toe. She couldn't whether an eternity like this, she had to do something. There had to be a way...

Perhaps if she could get one away from the group. The Flauros couldn't be in three places at once; if she could find a way to get one of the Order alone and apart from the artifact she could cross that name off her list in moments. It was a sketchy plan, but it was more than she'd had to work with leading up to that point. She sat on the swing a full day and pondered the possibilities. Despite her power, she was still only eight years-old.

Dahlia always had the Flauros with her and Wolfe was never far behind. He was sticking uncannily close for some reason, especially lately. Kaufmann was probably her best shot, but he was holed up in the hospital and never came out and the place was flooded with people at any given time. She'd have to get the rest of the Order out of the building, or at least enough to find him alone, and for that she needed good distraction. It would take more than the hoards of skin-monsters she'd learned to conjure over the last year, they had plenty of flunkies to send in response to something like that. In order to get her mother to the surface, it would take a visit from Alessa herself. But how could she be both places?

She glanced back to where her monster was standing guard and suddenly she had her idea.

~*~

Alessa and her monster approached Alchemilla hospital from the north. It was time to make her move. She summoned the dark power of the ancients to her, cracking the earth at her feet. The ripple showed up on the Order's radar and in no time the air-raid sirens leftover from the Cold War cranked to life. The blaring preceded the soldiers that poured out of the building and straight to her location.

Alessa squeezed her monster's hand. “They think we are inseparable. They won't expect me to leave you.” She waited until she sensed the Flauros arrive in the yard. “Keep them busy.” 

His grip twisted on the handle of his giant knife. 

Like a moth out of the fog, Dahlia appeared, the Flauros held before her. “Alessa! Alessa, my dear, have you come to surrender.”

“Never surrender.” The girl slipped her hand out of the Monster's filthy grasp. She spotted Wolfe come sneering out behind his leader and knew it was time to move. “We will fight.”

“Alessa!” Dahlia cried.

The girl pulled a veil of tatters up between the troops and herself. She whispered to her monster and vanished.

“Sick 'em.”

~*~

The girl reappeared inside the Hospital Director's office, screams and machine gun fire echoing through the windows from the street. Kaufmann was there at his desk, doing lines of White Claudia off an old catalog. Alessa's arrival turned his face as white as the drug. “You!”

“Do not call for help.” Alessa told him. “I will kill you.”

“Please!” He cried, toppling his chair on his way backward to the corner. “Please don't kill me, I beg you.”

“You plead for life yet you deserve death,” she said. She walked slowly around the desk, prowling, taking satisfaction in how terrified this grown man was of an eight year-old girl. “Why?”

“I – I was stupid!” Kaufmann blubbered. “I was a fool! They used me!”

“You burned a child alive,” Alessa reminded him, “you manipulated and tortured her until her spirit broke, all so you could use her.” The paper on the walls began to blacken and curl back, blood dripping from the wounds. Veins spread from Alessa's feet at every step. “You deserve punishment.”

“I – I didn't want to! It was their idea!” He insisted. “I beg you...I'll make it up to you!”

Alessa narrowed her eyes through her hair. “How?”

“There-there's a chemical!” He shoved off the wall and to his file cabinets where he began ripping files out of the drawers. “A-A powder.. capable of exorcising demons. Here!” He threw the file on the table, scattering the White Claudia in a cloud of dust. “ Aglaophotis. It's from a flower. I can make it...”

Alessa cocked her head to the side. “I'm listening.”

“The Aglaophotis can kill the god that's living in your body.” Kaufmann said. “It might take a while, but I swear... if you let me live I'll make it. I'll make it and I'll use it.”

“You would sabotage the Order in exchange for your life?” Alessa asked, deliberately testing his conviction. She knew the punishment he would face as a consequence would be severe. 

“I'm through with the Order,” Kaufmann insisted. “I'm being honest, this was more than I bargained for. I never thought it would get so bad, believe me.”

Alessa stared at him. It was hard to let go of the awful fantasies she'd prepared for him. Monsters were itching at the threshold of Hell waiting for her to give the signal, but the possibilities this Aglaophotis thing held were too good to pass up. She suppressed her blood-lust. The encroaching darkness retreated, giving Kaufmann a little room to breathe. He slouched in relief. Alessa wasn't ready to let him off so easy. “I came to kill you.”

He gulped.

“This promise you've made me is the only thing that has spared you. If you have lied, the next time we meet you will be cloven in two by the sword of my demon.” The rattling gunfire had stopped, it told Alessa it was time to go. “I will not be fooled twice.”

“I-I understand,” Kaufmann said with a tiny bow, “thank you. You won't regret it. I-I wont fail you.”

She glared at him and teleported to the street.

She reappeared right exactly where she had left. Three men lay dead in various pieces in the road. The rest were running back inside, realizing what she'd done. It was too late to find her of course, she reappeared and took in the scene. Shell casings littered the area, red blood on the asphalt sending ribbons of steam to mingle with the cold fog. Her monster was standing still in the center of the carnage, ricochet marks on his helmet and sword. Only one bullet had penetrated his defenses and punctured a bloody hole in his leg through his apron. She walked up behind and put her hand back into his. 

His fist closed around hers and she actually smiled. 

“Well done.”


	4. Chapter 4

From then on, the waiting was a game and Silent Hill one giant chessboard. 

Alessa played black; on her turn the board would change to spilled blood and sheet metal. Her pawns would climb up from the abyss and hoard the land finding and killing all the people they could. Her king was her Monster, wearing a crown of red metal and moving only one space at a time. 

Dahlia played white, using the calm periods of gray fog and snow to hunt her daughter restlessly. The Flauros was her guide, its shifting power hungry for all the dimensional energy Alessa summoned. The siren would sound at the summation of each turn like the counter in a timed match. It was as if some strange and intangible judge were watching as each player moved their pieces. 

The game continued for nearly a year, the peaceful resort of Silent Hill changing quickly into a ghost town as people either fled or were killed by Alessa's monsters. Only children seemed unaffected by the horrors of her waking nightmare, and it was a child that ventured out into the war-zone unarmed calling her name.

“Alessa!?” 

It was the thick of Alessa's turn, the night black as sackcloth and the land twisted by the darkness in her heart. The girl running through the shrouded streets was like a drop of purity in the lingering night, her white skin and long white hair nearly angelic amid her stark environment. Alessa heard her voice echoing across the lake from where she watched on the hotel dock. 

“Someone calls,” Alessa observed aloud. She hovered at her Monster's shoulder, her arm resting on the slope of his pyramidal head, “she is searching for me yet my monsters don't attack. This is unusual.” She ran her finger along the edge of his helmet like a villain stroking a beloved pet, “how should we respond?”

The Monster had no reply. As always, he stood with muscles tensed, his massive sword heavy on the ground behind him. He was her pillar of strength just like she needed, and she kept him near her always as her one true companion. The voice of the girl in the night didn't phase him a bit, still it captured Alessa's interest.

“Shall we answer?” She asked him, rhetorically, “it has been a long time since I came when I was called.” She took a hold of his helmet through a metal handle bolted laterally along a vent and felt the heated puff of his deliberate breath through the stifling mask. It made her feel anchored to the world. “Let's go.”

In the twist of space and cold air, they transferred from the burned shore of Lakeview Hotel to the ashen walk outside the church at the heart of town. The girl was running fearlessly this way. Alessa traded her Monster's helmet for his hand as she floated to the ground.

Like a ghost, the while figure rounded the corner, passing gray children and hobbling skin monsters without a thought. She caught sight of Alessa standing still in the road, her hair fluttering in her own private wind. “Alessa?” 

The girl answered hauntingly, “you called me?”

The stranger was almost joyful at the confirmation, “Alessa, my dearest sister, I have found you!”

Alessa tilted her head to one side, the memories of her abusive mother clear in her mind “I had no sister.”

“No sister? But don't you remember? We were companions at school...” her voice sounded hurt, “Claudia? Claudia Wolf? You sent me a letter.” She stepped forward and took Alessa's free hand in hers, her pleas more desperate.

Alessa recoiled from the girl and flashed a glance to her companion, but her Monster didn't flinch, nor did Claudia seem the tiniest bit afraid in his presence. Alessa suddenly wondered if the two could even see each other. 

Clauda rang Alessa's hand and stared pleading into her dark, dead eyes. “Oh Alessa, please remember. We were all each other had. You said you loved me like a real sister and I have always felt the same. Could I have left your mind so easily?”

Something was filtering back; what she was saying was true, but Alessa couldn't recall a single moment of the time they spent together. Her school life was monopolized by images of being called a witch and ostracized by her classmates. Still the honesty was there, and the formless shadow that supported it back in the depths of her mind was there as well. 

“Claudia,” Alessa began, “you will have to forgive me. I am not myself.”

“I know that, my dear, and I am sorry,” Claudia assured her, petting the hand she held. “I would have found you sooner but we were led to believe you were killed in that horrible fire.” The light of hellfires reflected in Claudia's platinum hair. She clicked her heels together and looked pleased with and proud of herself, “Father just told me the good news - had I but known when we were children that my sweet sister was to be the mother of God!” She sighed, wistfully, “Father promises to let me see you soon. He says the body that lies in Alchemilla still nurtures God within it, and that none but the most faithful are allowed in your presence, but I assure you I have so much faith!” 

Alessa listened to the talk of the brainwashed child with a mixture of reminiscent affection and bitter disgust. She was blind to the evil of the Order the same as she was blind to the horrors that stalked the town around her, but she was so proud of Alessa that it radiated from her like the wharf beacon on the dock at Lakeview. Alessa was drawn to it, although it seemed somewhat dangerous.

“Alessa, I have long desired to see you, but I'm afraid I cannot stay long,” Claudia cautioned, “we students have been strictly forbidden from wandering these places between sirens, but I wanted to find the consciousness of you that haunts the dreams of my father and the others. They search for you night and day, but I knew our mutual love would find us together again. Say we can meet again!”

Alessa was speechless in contrasting desire. She knew the danger of agreeing to be somewhere, but also wanted to learn more. There were things about her, good things left by the side of the road a year prior, that Claudia could tell her if she would only ask. The idea of these hidden truths made her feel closer to her lost half, closer to completion. Claudia's perky voice interrupted her thoughts.

“I know! Tomorrow is a special day! Meet me here at this same time, and I will throw a party for you!”

Alessa frowned, “party?”

Her excitement turned to pity, “oh my dearest, have you forgotten as well? Tomorrow is your birthday! You will turn ten years-old.”

“No,” Alessa said firmly, “my birth holds no happiness and I will not let you feed me to the Order, my time has not come.”

“No no, my dear,” Claudia assured her, “just us, just family!”

“I already have family,” Alessa answered. She squeezed the hand of her Monster and Claudia finally saw him. Her eye traveled the length of his bloodstained arm, up his nine feet and down the length of his translucently veined torso to the tattered smock and the edge of his imposing blade. 

Claudia gasped and stepped backward, arms pulled up to shield her chest, “what a fiend!”

“He is mine,” Alessa told her plainly, “we are both of the same forces.”

“Not a monster?” Claudia asked, looking him over again, “not at all a monster then, if he is your dearest friend. Worry not, I will bring no adults, but I have a friend who would very much like to learn of your present state and especially your new companion. You two are of like mind in that regard.”

She grinned to Alessa again and finally released her hand. “Tomorrow. Here. Please come.”

Alessa said nothing as Claudia turned and dashed again into the darkness. From somewhere in the distance the siren sang a ghostly warning and Alessa tightened her grip on her Monster's hand. “We're vulnerable. Back to the lake.”

The Order spread through the town as the snow gently fell and the white pawns moved. Alessa watched in contemplation from the shore side, replaying what Claudia had said to her in her mind. A meeting with a friend; it was such a normal thing. She had resigned herself to solitude and deemed herself a monster like all the other creatures, but with those shrouded memories she could practically touch the part of her soul she was missing. It felt good. She'd never longed for wholeness until now.

She was distracted from her thoughts when her Monster suddenly twitched. It was a spasm that shook the entirety of his body as a painful grunting sound echoed from his helmet. He dropped his knife, released her hand and with an anxiousness she'd never seen began to claw at the cage around his head in an urgent attempt to remove it. Pulling and raking made his vocalizations more pained. Alessa only understood the extent when streams of blood began pouring down his neck.

“Stop!” She rose into the air and grabbed his wrist, “stop it! You're hurting yourself! Stop!”

His muscles twitched all over, his breathing was hoarse and desperate like an animal as he tried to obey her command like it was the hardest thing he could possibly do. She released his wrist and clamped her arms around his head, eyes closed tight, hoping his loyalty to her would keep him from tugging any more at the heavy red metal. She could feel her heart beating hard in her chest miles away in the basement of the hospital while she hovered there on the lake shore, confused and horrified. 

Her tactic worked, his body lost its twitch and tension, but the breath in his cage was still raspy and shallow. Alessa tried to calm her heart as the blood of the body she was missing surged past the burned remnants of her distant ears, its arrhythmical palpitations were strange to her, they blurred the distinction between the hospital reality and her own. Alessa rubbed her head on the dirty metal to remind her where her consciousness lie. Her monster raised one hand and placed it reassuringly on her back.

“What's happening to us?” Alessa asked him, “what made you hurt yourself that way? Was it me? Did I do it?” She clung tighter, her fingers closing around the handles she'd unconsciously installed herself at the moment of his creation, “never do it again.”

She meditated in that moment, feeling what it was to feel as she was at the lake, listening to the pain and horror of her subconscious. Behind closed eyes she could see the nightmares flare, the twisted horrors of the Otherworld, she saw visions of death and dismemberment in stronger flashes and colors than she ever had before. What filtered to her had a grotesquely surreal quality with insects and flying things and monsters that resembled snarling dogs hunting and ripping sinew from wriggling prey. It was like the nightmare of her nightmares with an intensity that nearly made her cringe. 

Eyes still closed, she could see through bleary damaged ones beyond. Shapes; people moving in the room around her gurney. Doctors. A nurse in a red cardigan. A voice - her mother; 'intensity', 'PTV', 'swift end'. 

Her working eyes opened and she saw the lake shore and the white light glowing on the wharf near by. From that basement, a girl's adoring voice whispered in her muffled ear. 

“Happy Birthday dear sister...”


	5. Chapter 5

The Siren blared and marked the change of turns. The burned coal and spilled blood hazed back into thick fog and piles of ash and Alessa landed softly on the road, reserved and quiet. The army of childlike creatures she'd conjured from the blackness broke formation and shambled off into the mist. Their role on the light side was distract not attack – to give her mother's pawns something to shoot at and keep them from finding her. Undoubtedly the little hellspawn would be blown apart with shotguns and handguns but she didn't care. They didn't mean anything to her. The first of the gunshots split the damp air. She listened past it for the sound of metal scraping on asphalt. 

Nothing, the place was quiet. She'd left him somewhere back on Nathan Avenue, he was so slow, she'd just have to go back for him.

Alessa walked her way back through Silent Hill, passing dead bodies of monsters and men feeling no guilt or moral qualm for the lives she had cost. Her goal was still revenge and she pursued it with the same persistence. Unintentionally, she found herself in front of the church.

A phantom dashed through the haze, running right past one of her shambling skin monsters without a thought. She'd seen this before. Claudia.

In this light, the elder girl's blue school uniform was what contrasted with the world. She stood in the street in front of the church and scanned the mist. She was joined by a second child, his shape starkly dark in the fog, who passed a gray child by inches. Apparently children were immune from the manipulation of the parallel dimensions; perhaps it was because the young mind was more open to changes in perceptible reality, or it could have been the very nature of playing a game, or it could have been their innocence; a strange twist of fate since children are often more cruel than any flesh-hungry monster or demon. 

Claudia spotted her and broke into grins. She grabbed her companion and dashed over, “Alessa! I thought you'd forgotten our arrangement! It gladdens my heart to see you! Are you feeling better?”

Alessa drew back; she had an instrument of justice to recover, she'd never intended to meet her as promised yet here she was and with her came that same tug of curiosity. This woman was like the flower she was named after: a drug with the power to manipulate whoever fell under her spell. “better?”

Claudia nodded, “father brought me to see your poor body last night. He gave you a new medicine that he said would ease your pain. Has it worked yet?”

Alessa remembered the sudden spell she felt on the lake shore and knew what they'd given her was not medicine. Slowly the illusion that the girl would conjure good feelings from her past vanished. She was a groomed young member of the Order ready to believe anything they told her blindly and wholeheartedly. Just then the boy she'd arrived with approached. He was twelve years-old, no one she recognized from her more innocent days, with floppy brown hair and over-sized glasses. His appearance gave Alessa the impression he was still growing into himself. He wiped mist from his lenses and blinked at the sight of the half-girl in wonder, “she's real!” 

“Oh, how rude of me!” Claudia cried, “Alessa, this is Vincent, he is training for the priesthood.”

“It is an honor,” he said, offering his hand. Alessa narrowed her eyes and he pulled it back in a flamboyant motion like a bow, “to meet the Holy Mother herself! Well, not the actual mother, but the soul of the mother separated from her body. It is truly amazing. You have such wonderful powers, it has been a dream to meet you in person some day.”

“I am none of the things you say,” Alessa told him, frankly. 

“Well,” he seemed charmed, “then I hope we can be friends. Can we be friends, Alessa?”

Alessa sized him up, he was deceptively approachable and that concerned her, “why?”

“Why? Well, I have devoted my life to your persona and your destiny,” he said, “I only wish to understand and revere you. Is that too much to ask?”

Alessa kept her silence. Claudia interrupted with gusto, “come now, dear sister, I brought him to meet you specifically. When I told him about your friend he had to see you.”

“Yes, where is he?” Vincent asked, “I've heard he's a real brute. Do you have any idea who he was?”

'Was?” Alessa asked, stalled by the question.

“Vincent believes that the monsters in town used to be people,” Claudia told her, “people who have surrendered to darkness in order to survive.”

“If it's true, then it is definitive proof of life after death!” Vincent cried, “so do you have any clues? Someone you knew? Your father perhaps?”

Her jaw dropped. Her monster – he was hers. He was given to her by the powers at be, if he were a human...

“Not my father,” Alessa answered, “I have no father.”

“None at all?” Vincent asked, “fascinating. Well, he has to be someone. Someone who protected you?”

Could he... could he be Travis? She'd been thinking of him when she summoned her Monster from the ground that day, wishing he'd come back to her, had she pulled him across time and used her dark powers to transform him? Had he been killed on the road and pulled up from the underworld to her side again? 

No, her Monster was nothing like Travis. He was no one, just like the other monsters she pulled from the depths were no one, and she grew angry at Vincent for even suggesting otherwise, “monsters are monsters, he is no one person.”

Vincent's eyebrows rose above the thick rim of his glasses, “you're sure? I hope you have made a mistake, your monster has become the linchpin in my theory!”

“Come now, Alessa, everyone knows how you've grown attached to him!” Claudia protested, “don't be rude to Vincent now.”

“Everyone?” Alessa asked.

“Oh yes, Claudia hasn't shut up about meeting you yesterday,” Vincent teased, “she's gabbed on and on about how you held the hand of this bloodstained monster like he was your frightening older brother.”

Alessa's eyes flamed like fire, she turned quickly to Claudia, “you told everyone!?”

“My father was particularly interested,” Claudia said, “it seems that creature is responsible for nearly crippling is arm. They were all amazed that you'd tamed it so.”

“Your father?” Alessa paused and remembered; a wounded arm, Claudia... Wolf. Leonard Wolf. Number three on her list of the damned.

Claudia nodded, “he says the creature is a window that lets them see to the true heart that beats within you, that through him they will end your suffering...”

“No!” Alessa shouted. Where was her Monster? What had they done? Just then she noticed gunshots echoing somewhere over the rooftops. How long had they been sounding? Why hadn't she heard them before? The siren began to crank to life.

“Alessa?” Claudia gasped.

“You know nothing!” Alessa roared, rising from the ground, “you're wrong! You spread lies! If you cared about me as a sister should you never would have told! Let me alone!” 

The siren roared loud, the ground moaned and opened, revealing cracks straight to mantle, red magma flowing like blood. All sounds grew a hundred times louder, the siren shook the spaces in their heads. The gunshots were heard ricocheting from metal. Alessa heard the roar of her creature, enraged and strangled by unknown forces deep in the town. She should never have left him alone, they were using him to draw her to them. It was a trap yet willingly she flew the streets to them, brick crumbling from the walls as she went.

She didn't think to raise demons or strategy or defense. She found the circle of attackers with torches on Nathan Avenue. Twenty or thirty of them threw nets over the familiar slope of the angled helmet. Her Monster pulled against the ropes, the effort causing pain and sending more ribbons of red blood down his neck. His knife was still in hand, although they tried to wrestle it from him. With bursts of strength he swung it through the netting, snapping lines and pulling down attackers. To compensate they threw more nets and tried catch his arms in bonds. Dahlia stood in the center of the fray, Flauros held high, and when Alessa approached, she called all activity to a stop, “wait!” 

Dahlia drew her finger through the air, parting the crowd before it until it rested on Alessa as she floated in a fit of rage. The guns and voices fell silent, even her Monster ceased to struggle, they may have caught the king, but the black queen had come. 

“Alessa!” Her mother's voice rang out clean and clear over the heads of all assembled, “we have your warrior. We will slay him here in front of you unless you come back to us. Will you now return to your body?”

Alessa's heart was beating hard in her physical ribcage, the feeling like an echo in her own ghost chest here on Nathan. She didn't speak, just floated in the air five yards off and stared hatred into all of them as her mind went mad with anxiety. 

Her Monster stood panting in the trap, his skin gleaming with sweat in the torchlight. His arms were already striped from near misses and dotted with direct hits. The nets around him were soaked red from his wounds and those of the lives he'd taken in his capture now laying about his feet like a fort of dead flesh. He was exhausted, trapped and wouldn't survive without her. She knew he was too dangerous and they'd kill him either way. Her half a heart was breaking with hot tears streaming down her face. 

“Alessa,” her mother said, more sternly, “come back or your beloved pet dies.”

“No,” Alessa spat, “he is not my pet.”

“Oh he isn't?” Dahlia asked, twisting her voice the way she used to when she'd caught Alessa the child in a lie, “I hear you have grown quite fond -”

“IT MEANS NOTHING TO ME!!!” Alessa roared. She screamed at the top of her lungs, her tears turned red to blood on her white face, “it's a monster! I can make more! I'll make hundreds more to stop you! I am hatred and dread and despair, all forged by your wicked cult! You can't threaten me with that THING you've caught! It means to me as much as if you'd caught a fly or a toad and told me I loved it. I can't love! After what you've done to me I can't love anything or anyone ever again! Especially not THAT!” She pointed to her creature, her voice trembling at the edge of breaking, “I HATE IT!”

At the peak of her despair the siren blared again. Black monsters rose like phantoms from the ground, quadrupedal and growling, they were the manifestation of all her fear and loathing. These growling dogs rushed the group in a pack. The men screamed, fired guns, dropped their torches and scattered as teeth tore skin and clothing. Dahlia pulled the Flauros in tight to protect it. Alessa drew in a tattered breath and flew straight for her Monster.

She grabbed hold, faded to black, and when she opened her eyes the world was quiet. The two of them were in Toluca Park near the lake. In the distance she heard the shrieks and snarling of the battle, red firelight flickering in the blackness. She sank, relieved, into the web of netting beneath her.

Her Monster was unmoved by the events. He stood still as she freed him from the ropes covering his head and touched the fresh dings in his helmet with the tips of her fingers.

“You were caught because of me.” She'd never expected her marvelous weapon to be turned against her. The Order had found her weakness and it was something she couldn't deny. In spite of all the hopelessness and negativity she'd been left with, she had come to love him. When he was in danger she couldn't stay away. 

She knew what she had to do.

“Go.”

The Monster stood, his knife in hand, blood stained it to its hilt. Real tears of sorrow washed the bloodstreaks from Alessa's face. “GO! I never want to see you again! Go far away from here! I don't need you anymore!”

The Monster tarried longer, as if sensing the contradiction deep in her heart.

“Move you damned thing!” She shouted, “you disgust me! I hate you! Go far away from here and never come back!”

He still didn't move. She couldn't stand it anymore, closed her eyes and screamed. “GO AWAY!" When she opened them again she'd teleported into the heart of Toluca Prison far away from the park, Nathan Avenue, the church, everything.


	6. Chapter 6

Alessa slipped into a self-inflicted semicoma of misery and despair in the prison deep beneath Silent Hill. Years passed like phantoms through the darkness while she sat seeing nightmares in the dusty corner of her cell. When she closed her eyes she saw the raging anguish she'd left in her body and felt the pull of the Order's spell meant to draw her back, but she'd resigned to this cell like a lifer waiting out her sentence wondering if she would ever truly die. 

She envied the half of her soul she'd freed from this torment. Where was that child now? How old was she? Three? Five? Was she happy? All Alessa could see were monsters and hellfire; a prisoner of body and mind.

As she slept, Silent Hill lay dormant. The Order combed the town for her but found nothing, without the manifestation of her parallel-shifting power, the Flauros was little more than a trinket and the cult was losing hope. In all these years they'd never found her, leaving her alone and sad in the abandoned facility until one fateful day when the sanctity of her dreadful eternity was stirred by the sudden intrusion of a sound

It had been small and muffled, hardly enough to wake her, yet her eyes slowly opened and she caught a glimpse of a shape scuttling past her cell door. Alessa's senses were instantly alert. She rose slowly, taller now than she'd been when she settled in, her metaphysical body aged proportionally and blue school uniform tailored to match. She stepped stiffly toward the door finding a wide path swept in the dust and grime. The intruder had been larger than any animal living down there. From the smudged hand prints on the floor, it looked like it had been a man.

Alessa checked the room but whoever it had been was gone. Had the order found her at long last? Or sent a spy? Whoever it was they'd crawled in and out, moving faster than she'd expected and making little more than a rustling sound. Perhaps it was a monster. The glimpse she'd gotten almost felt familiar...

As if from Hell itself, the moan of the siren cranked hauntingly to life.

“Do you hear that!?”

“The Siren! She must be near!”

Alessa retreated back to her corner at the sound of the voices. The Order WAS here after all. That monster had led them straight to her, the traitor. Why?

She heard the sound of running feet; dozens of them; a raiding party storming her castle. She couldn't hide now that they knew she was here, but what did it matter? She was still a creature of darkness, she could still draw monsters and in these close quarters they'd line up to die.

Alessa reached out to stir up the essence, the overwhelming response of the demons made her smile, reinvigorating her as she twisted the dark tendrils with her fingers. Before she knew it, the intruders were pounding on the door, their voices muttering over the clatter of weapons. A gun was fired, lock broke and twenty heavily armed mortals entered her midst. 

They were a SWAT team of cultists and Alessa stared the fear of god into them. They stopped and stared back, parts of their hearts doubting they'd actually unearthed their elusive quarry. The search was over at long last. One leveled his gun. “It's her! It's really her! Take her down, men!”

They all squeezed their triggers, but the bullets moved to avoid her as if skirting a forcefield. Alessa smiled and raised her two hands. “That's how you plan to kill the dead?”

The ground beneath them wrinkled like parchment over heat. Pale children clawed up from the cracks to grab at the intruder's ankles. The men turned their guns on them and ripped their faces apart with the spray. Alessa used the distraction to send a frontal assault. Grown men screamed as skin monsters took them down. 

The commotion was a symphony Alessa's defeated spirit needed to get her back in the game. She rejoiced in the carnage and soaked in the acid of her power until suddenly she felt the intrusion of a void. The monsters froze in their attack and above the crowd rose the golden light of the sacred relic that was drinking all her energy dry.

“I have finally found you, Alessa!” Dahlia Gillespie said in triumph, making her way to the front of the crowd with the Flauros like a torch, “it has been a long time for a little girl by herself, although it seems you are not so little anymore.”

Alessa tried to teleport out but found she could not. The Flauros was stealing any power she called and shook the core of her foundations with fresh memories of pain and suffering. The monsters around her turned to cinders and were sucked into the Flauros like a vaccuum. Alessa felt sick and thin, she staggered against the back wall and felt herself starting to fade. The rusty cement walls quickly changed back to normal as the strength of her legs was drawn like everything else into the talisman's hungry vortex. 

“There my daughter, that's better,” Dahlia crooned, bringing the instrument of her destruction closer and closer with each step, “don't worry, I'll make sure your soul returns safely to your body so that you may finally give birth to our god.”

“Your god will never be born,” Alessa rasped, her voice weak from the attack and grainy from neglect, “I'm not a whole soul.”

“Of course not,” Dahlia agreed. She pressed the Flauros so close that the color began to train from Alessa's dress, “but you will be once you rejoin the part that is still in your body.”

“You don't know anything,” Alessa hissed.

“Words are all you have left,” he mother told her, grinning as the projected shape of Alessa faded like a ghost from this world. “There is no escape.”

The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed. The floor changed from poured cement to grated metal with the sound of something heavy being dragged across it. That something appeared in a flash of red steel. One of the Orderlies jumped in to cover his leader and was rewarded with the sharp blade of a knife stuck cleanly through his lungs. 

Dahlia dropped to the floor with his body on top of her, the Flauros skittering from her hand across the floor. Alessa eyed it just out of reach, unable to touch it. Instead she looked to her savior. The creature withdrew its blade from the corpse of the man, his tattered bloody apron and heavy metal helmet wearing all the scars and familiar markings of her beloved executioner. Alessa had no idea how he'd gotten here, but she was the nearest to happy she had been since her own death. “Monster!”

The creature paused and gave no response.

Alessa's voice was small and strained, “the Flauros, Monster, destroy it...”

“Ignore her!” Dahlia commanded her followers, “the Flauros robs her of her control over this creature!” She scrambled out from under the body and reached for the glowing object before her. The Monster stepped in front of her and raised his sword to serve the woman a killing blow. Dahlia recoiled and shrieked.

The Orderlies let loose their bullets, automatic weaponry filling the space with flying lead and ear-splitting rattles. The great knife swung wide and crossed the Monster's body like a shield, deflecting bullets like hail on a tin roof. Dahlia covered her head and crawled away to the safety of her armed guard. 

Alessa could feel herself wasting away. As she stared up at the sparks flying form the helmet of her monster, her vision blurred, images of Talouca prison replaced with the ceiling of a hospital bed and her wraith-like body itching with the aching sting of fresh wounds. She didn't have much longer until the Flauros had her trapped forever on that gurney. She whispered hoarsely, “Monster. Please.”

The Monster turned from defensive to offensive. He turned the knife blade-out and swung wide at the attack party. They ceased fire and stepped back, guns falling in pieces and blood spewing from amputated hands. With them reeling he turned and drug the point of his weapon toward the Flauros as it sucked blood and dirt from his skin.

Alessa managed a smile, the skin on her face cracking painfully with the effort.

Dahlia pointed over the crowd, “kill it! While its back is turned!”

Throughout the room twenty or thirty automatic weapons cocked. The Monster moved toward his goal undeterred. The guns opened fire and Alessa's faded voice could only gowl out a scream.

The bullets ripped into the monster's back, mulching it like a grinder, spraying brownish blood across the walls. It flinched and turned, the fire taking apart his left shoulder and riveting up his side and across his chest. The edge of his helmet cheated in to shield his core, but blood and loose tissue streamed down his tattered apron in rivers. The machine gun fire moved to his legs, trying to take out his knees. He stepped back from the assault and let out a gutteral echoing roar that resounded above the rattle of fire like the unholy siren itself as a manifestation of primal rage and the incarnation of anguish. 

His good arm recovered his blade from his bad, bullet wounds exploding out of new flesh as he turned. He took another step, listing to one side as connecting tissue and fiber were sheered from his forward knee in dark sprays of blood, and with his great strength, raised the knife into the air and dropped it hard onto the Flauros with such force that it broke back into the component parts it started as. 

Alessa felt her power return like a blast of hot air. The room exploded into a den of fire to mirror her rage. “DIE!!!”

Blackened creatures rushed from the fiery walls holding spears and knives, heads covered in masks the same as those worn by Silent Hill's executioners as they passed judgement on the people. The army shore through the men without mercy, their numbers overwhelming. The Order beat a panicked retreat and were lanced through their backs as they ran. 

Alessa's Monster staggered his full weight on the planted blade of his knife but fell, hitting and painting a thick red smear down the wall behind. Dahlia crawled to the scene and scooped up the pieces of her relic. She cast a hateful glare to Alessa and dodged the executioners on her way to the door like a child dodging monsters in the street. The army of scorched killers followed leaving Alessa alone with the corpses in her burning room. The severity of what had happened finally washed over her. 

“Monster!”

She dropped to the ground, her powers forgotten, and tripped herself on her way to her creature's side. He was slumped nearly lifeless on the floor, his labored breathing shuddering off the interior walls of his cage. Alessa knelt next to him, feeling the heart she thought she'd sent away breaking within her, and realized that love of all the emotions caused pain as well as joy.

She put her hand in his, remembering the strength she felt when he was new as his massive fist closed around hers. Here in this state, his fingers did not respond. She crawled in and pressed her ear to his wounded chest. “I'm sorry.”

She could hear a heart beating in him, the rhythm growing slower.

“I didn't mean those things I said to you. I do need you.” She felt the sob choke tears out of her tired eyes, the salt stinging phantom wounds at the corners and on her cheeks as they ran to mingle with the stains on his chest. “You came because I needed you.”

She closed her eyes and listened, waiting for the sounds of life to cease beneath his cold clammy skin. She felt the heavy press of his hand reach and plant on her back the way it had when he'd rescued her from the Order the day she'd brought him to life.

That's right, he was hers and only hers, created to be all those things she needed. Alessa's eyes opened again with a look of determination, her grip tightening around her Monster's chest, she shut them again in conscentration, “no, I won't let you die.”

With a thought the two of them vanished, the flaming walls fading back to cold, bloodstained cement when they'd gone.


	7. Chapter 7

When a person is sick, they are taken to the hospital. Perhaps this knowledge guided her on some subconscious level because despite the obvious danger, Alchemilla hospital was exactly where she and her Monster ended up. Luckily enough the basement of the Order’s center of operation was about the safest place they could have been. The floor where her body lay had long been cleared of all patients and staff, leaving only the members of the Order and a handful of trusted medical staff to traverse the halls. None of them ever thought to search for Alessa so close to the prison they intended her to stay in, and they never dreamed she’d take up permanent residence just a room away. Here she stayed with her Monster propped in a dark corner against the separating wall listening to the sounds of the nightmare in her head.

She’d learned long ago that this nightmare was the fuel for her power. It was nourishing the fetal god Samael, and it was Samael that was keeping her mortally wounded body alive despite all odds. In this same way, she was maintaining the life of her Monster as he lay torn and bleeding on the floor too weak to move. Alessa was confident she could heal him; all she needed was the time. She rubbed her head into his chest and listened as his heartbeat grew stronger.

Together they lapsed into yet another long sleep, but this one was far easier to pass than the last. Alessa could dream of the day when her Monster was well again and together they’d strike against her mother and the Order and make them pay for all the pain they’d caused the both of them. No more tug-of-warring around Silent Hill delaying the day her soul was complete; the attack on her Monster had reawakened the flame of vengeance in Alessa and she was ready to dish it out. As long as she wasn’t alone, as long as there was someone resistant to the Flauros with her to help, she knew she was the most powerful creature in Silent Hill.

Months turned into years passing peacefully amid the harsh sound of her Monster's rattling breath. The Order entered another fruitless search and the town grew still until one day when Alessa was stirred by the sound of someone moving in her room.

Her awareness returned one sense at a time. She felt the clammy skin under her cheek and heard the inner workings of her pillow's body as she rode his chest up and down. There was a soft padding sound, like bare hands and feet moving in the shadows. When she opened her eyes she was suddenly face to face with an otherworldly creature crouched and hovering uncomfortably over her.

Alessa gasped and drew back, the face of the new monster was impossible to focus on. She could see no features, but knew it was staring at her with such burning intensity that it actually conveyed heat. It was human shape but feral in nature, wearing a bloodstained smock and gloves on his splayed hands. There was no visual recollection to draw from, but somehow Alessa knew this was the stranger from the basement of the prison; the one who'd visited shortly before the Order found her hiding there.

For a long while the two hovered silently, staring at each other. In time the shock and discomfort of the Stranger's presence subsided and Alessa composed herself enough to speak. “What are you?”

The monster didn't move, his face still a blur to her.

“Did I create you?”

Slowly the answer filtered up into her head like one of her own thoughts.

“No,” she answered herself, “no you're something else. Something more ancient...” 

The Stranger's head tipped slowly to one side.

Alessa cleared her throat, “are you going to give away my hiding place again? Like you did that last time?” The reply was sharp as it entered her mind, making the question sound stupid and offensive to the point that she was ashamed to have asked it, “you didn't lead them to me. You... you came to warn me?” She paused again, then broke eye contact and suddenly looked to her Monster lying in blood beside her, “you led him to me!”

The Stranger eased back onto his ankles in a strange sense of satisfaction. It reached into the pocket of its smock and retrieved a token in the form of a ceramic disk, holding it toward her as a gift.

Alessa paused before taking it, “will this protect me too?” He held the token with palpable intensity. Slowly she lowered her fingers to the engraved surface. 

First contact came with a sudden flash of light. She heard the screaming of her subconscious mind suffering in the next room dissolve in the sound of the air-raid siren as it blared between her ears until she was deaf to all else. Then there was nothing – a peace an quiet she'd forgotten after living so long with the shadows of nightmares in her head. The token had shut out the power of Samael. She knew then the power of the graven seal could delay the birth of god.

The Stranger left the token in her hand and drew backwards, crawling on knuckles into the shadows. Alessa looked from the blood red mark on the disk to the creature, noticing the same symbol carved into the skin of his shoulders. “V-Valtiel.”

The Stranger slowed in its withdrawal.

“You've been watching me this whole time,” she realized, “you've protected me from the Order – with my Monster, and the siren, and this seal – you're a servant of god right? Then why are you helping me work against him?”

Valtiel paused just short of vanishing in the darkness. He implanted one last thought into her head. 

“God is meant to come in its own time...” Alessa said, “humans shouldn't rush it, because it is more powerful than they expect. You protect me because I'm taking care of your master. Is that right?”

Valtiel dissolved into the shadows, but deep inside Alessa knew the answer was 'yes'.


	8. Chapter 8

Valtiel's gift was surely a blessing, all Alessa had to do was figure out what to do with it. It posed a sort of problem in that when she touched it, the nightmare she'd lived with for so long was silenced. This nightmare, her tormented soul, was nourishment for the developing occult deity living in her body. Without this nightmare, the fetal god would not be born, Alessa would be victorious over the Order, and the world at large would be spared a great evil.

Unfortunately Samael wasn't the only one pulling power from her nightmares. With the Seal of Metatron in use, Alessa could not summon the dark forces of Silent Hill; she was defenseless, and more importantly, her Monster's wounds stopped healing. 

It was a tug of war with revenge and the greater good on one side and her monster and self-defense on the other. It was a lot for a fourteen year-old half-soul to deal with. It seemed like most her time was spent clinging to her monster's bleeding arm and staring at the tablet in the middle of the floor wondering whether he meant more to her than peace.

Ultimately her mind was made for her one fateful day. She was dreaming about a coloring book and a car trip, a man sitting beside her. He called her Cheryl and asked how she was doing. Alessa knew this man was her father and realized the body she was dreaming as was half her age and pure of heart. The two of them were heading toward Silent Hill.

Alessa awoke in the hospital with the Seal of Metatron in her hand. The dream she'd been having still resonated in her, too real to have been imagined. It held a sort of polarizing grip on her, beckoning her to the road and begging for completion. Her other soul was coming here! 

What could have drawn it? It was supposed to be far away from here, somewhere safe, why would it come back to this miserable town?

Did it have something to do with the Seal of Metatron? The tablet was the only thing that had changed recently, perhaps it influenced her separation spell? Or perhaps it redirected the homing ritual the cult performed over her body years ago. 

It didn't matter how or why, the point was that her other half was headed this way and nothing would be able to stop it. Except, maybe, her.

She tucked the tablet in her pocket and unlaced herself from her monster's side. He stirred as she left, a low grumble rolling inside his helmet. His good arm reached up to grab a hold of it, but he was still weak, and stood no chance of removing it even though he was obviously trying. Alessa reached out and placed a hand on the striped and rusty metal, “be calm, Monster.”

He left his helmet alone and tried to stand, but his useless left arm couldn't shoulder the weight of his heavy head. Alessa put both hands on his helmet and pressed him to the wall. 

“No, stay here, I'll come back for you.”

She left him in the corner and hurried to the door. The hall outside was filthy, fallen into disrepair after years of housing pure evil within its walls. No one was in sight, but she could hear voices coming from one of the examination rooms. She recognized one as Kauffman, Alchemilla hospital director, and the other sounded feminine. With the Seal of Metatron on her person, Alessa would have to sneak past them and take the elevator up to the street.

“We had a deal!” Kauffman roared through the open door.

“I don't care!” The woman roared back, “I can't stand it anymore! That child's inhuman! She's cursed or something, she gives me nightmares, she haunts me while I'm awake... the drugs don't even work anymore! I can't stand it!”

Alessa paused just outside the room to listen. They were talking about her. She stole a look inside to see a weary looking young nurse in a red sweater. She'd been very beautiful at an earlier time in her life, but now her face was gaunt and pale with hollow eyes. Tears were smearing the mascara down her face.

“You don't have a choice,” Dr. Kauffman told her, “your a prisoner of your addiction and I run the contraband in this town! You won't get PTV anywhere else, sooner or later you'll be crawling back and I'll put you right back where you are, dressing wounds on a child that never heals.”

“You're wrong!” The nurse cried, her voice strained to near madness.

“What are you going to do? Cold Turkey?” Kauffman said with a laugh, “you've already failed rehab twice, Lisa, what makes you think it'll work now?”

“Won't have a choice,” Lisa said, “I've already put a call in to Brahams. I'm exposing you. They're sending cops, and when they get here I'll point them straight down here to your drugs and your cult and that hellish little monster you've kept me chained to the last seven years!”

Kauffman lost his good humor and took a step backward, the retreat strengthening what little spirit Lisa still had unbroken, “that's right, Dr. Kauffman! I've blown the whistle on you! You and the Order will pay for what you did to me, to that little girl, to this whole town... you'll finally see justice! Even if I kill myself in rehab, at least I know I'll have escaped the fate you've earned! You're in the pit too deep, Doctor, you're going to burn in Hell!”

Kauffman reached behind him and grabbed a lamp off the examination room desk. Before she knew what had happened, the lamp was flying toward her, swung execution style over the Doctor's head and making sharp contact with her skull. The blow cut deep, blood gushing from where the base of the lamp penetrated the bones below her scalp.

Lisa was in shock. She couldn't process fast enough to cry out before the lamp came down again, hard, throwing her to the ground. Alessa watched her skull bounce and splatter gore over the Doctor's white lab coat. He fell to one knee and beat her again and again to be sure, but there was no doubt in the fourteen year-old's mind that the woman was dead. 

Alessa used the chaotic moment to rush to the elevator. The car was waiting in the basement for a passenger and the doors opened and closed before Kauffman stumbled to the hall, confident the lamp and his bloody lab coat were the only witnesses to his crime.

The elevator doors opened and Alessa tore out. In the time she'd been hiding there, the hospital was changed from Order HQ to factor for the White Claudia drug PTV. The halls leading to the front door were dusty and deserted and the world beyond the hospital walls was blank and white like an unmarked canvas. She still couldn't teleport from place to place so she took off running up Crichton toward Old Silent Hill where her half soul was rocketting in. She moved as fast as she could, taking shortcuts over fences and weaving between buildings as she went. 

Finally she arrived at the bridge, sooty snow blowing specks of white through the migrating fog. She could see headlights faintly in the distance, the seven year-old girl sitting oblivious in the passenger seat a brighter beacon than any mortal light could be. If the Order found her, they'd have the upper hand. She had to drive the car off, or stop it, or do something. 

The car was coming...

Alessa stepped into the road.


	9. Chapter 9

Alessa never expected this war. It was hard-fought but not with the Order, within herself. 

In the last seven years the good half of Alessa Gillespe's soul had been living on her own, Cheryl'd grown a very unique and individual ego of her own. Alessa was older and stronger as far as metaphysical power was concerned, but that didn't make Cheryl any less of an ego. The girl entity that was left after the two of them fused was a baffled and frightened seven year-old creature running randomly through Silent Hill.

Alessa still had the Order on her mind. Despite the disorder, the soul within the metaphysical body was complete and therefore prime for the birth of the cult's unholy god. She had to keep away from her mother and stall for time, but every time she attempted progress to that effect she was stalled by the compulsion to go to school or draw pictures or find her daddy. 

Slowly and deliberately Alessa gained ground. She focused on what was most important, staying out of reach. When she felt most like herself she pulled monsters from the depths to swarm the places she'd been, drawing the seal of Metatron on anything she could find and ripping the town apart. Cheryl's dominance came with consuming concern and emotion for her father who was stumbling around on her tail like a mongoose chasing her down her hole.

Harry Mason was a good man. Alessa's mind was filled with years of memories chronicling her extra childhood spent in the care of he and his wife. He raised her to be happy and healthy with love and understanding – the kind of life she wished her birth mother had given her instead of immolating her and impregnating her with pure evil. The good father was so intent on recovering her that even the scariest and most deadly roadblocks couldn't chase him off. He was heart-driven and unfortunately easily manipulated.

Dahlia had gotten to him somehow. Every light-side turn the Cheryl in her was compelled to track down and observe her father's dealings, leaving him bullets and medicine where she hoped he would find them while the dark side Alessa used all the weapons in her arsenal to drive him off, even the ghosts of the the dead. Dahlia was using him as an errand boy and throwing him blindly into the Otherworld hoping her childhood devotion to him would either calm her rage or allow him to get close. It was a brilliant tactic and worked like a charm. Alessa could hurl monster after monster and him but Cheryl kept calling him closer, wanting him near her, and sabotaging herself. 

Alessa couldn't deny the attraction the Cheryl moments brought. The girl was like a creature made of pure light, every thought and motive altruistic and positive with warmth and tenderness and love behind them. Slowly the affect of having her there unearthed repressed memories Alessa had lost; trips to the woods to add to her bug collection, skipping home from school singing nursery rhymes, playing cards on the floor of her bedroom with Claudia. 

Finally the shadowy mass of memory Claudia Wolf tried to illuminate was clear. She could remember every moment she'd spent with the girl and how they'd talked together about their abusive parents and bonded in pinky swears and pacts to someday escape. How tragic that both would be trapped by a nightmare, hers in body and Claudia's in soul. 

She could see Cheryl's memories change too. She watched the pure negativity taint and twist her experiences into what they really were. She saw an outing in the park become a skinned knee, a friendly playdate dissolve into teasing and nagging, normal things the innocent mind of her counterpart had conveniently forgotten returning and driving her to dispair.

Harry finally caught up to her just outside Lakeside Amusement Park. He was tired and bloody with at least two gunshots visible on his body. He leveled a gun at her from across the Otherworld grating, his kind and fatherly voice full of malice.

"Where's Cheryl?" He demanded, "what have you done with her!?"

Alessa felt her heart twist. She couldn't speak to him, and tried to force him away from her with an invisible barrier. The wall sent him tumbling to the rusted ground. Something bounced out of his pocket.

Pyramid shaped. Glowing... the Flauros!

Alessa froze in place. Dahlia must have snuck it to him somehow! So that was why Dahlia kept him dogging her, his unique ability to sneak past her defenses allowed him to transport the mousetrap straight to the mouse. How had she not sensed it!?

The trinket rose from his hand of its own accord, shining white as it drank the power from her barrier. She turned to run but it ensnared her in its hungry grip. She could hear Dahlia cackling from somewhere deep in Silent Hill. Her vision blurred, her powers went mad.

The Alessa/Cheryl combination panicked and tried its best to teleport both she and Harry away from the danger. She had one safe place: the hospital where she'd hid securely for years where the ghost of the recently murdered nurse could watch over him. She'd hide in her bedroom at home, no in the school, in the basement of her mother's pawn shop, in the snow, in the fire... 

Somewhere. Anywhere. Nowhere.

Alessa opened her eyes again. She was laying face down on the steel plates staring at the glowing Flauros feet from her face. Its parts turned like clockwork, powered from deep inside. The image phased in and out like a film suffering from double exposure showing her images of one of Alchemilla's hallways and the sound of a creaking wheelchair as it crossed the decaying tile floor. She began to lose consciousness and could see the firey nightmare licking the corners of her eyes. The calls of hellbeasts echoed in her ears over the roaring crank of the siren that sounded more like a wail of despair. A thought filtered strongly up in the back of her mind;

You've failed me.

Alessa opened her eyes again in the presence of the Flauros on the metal grating. She was awake only long enough to see Valtiel step from the shadows, take the glowing artifact in his gloved hand and leave before she surrendered entirely to the nightmares in her mind.


	10. Chapter 10

When Alessa's coma was disturbed, her mind was broken like a fallen mirror. She could practically see the glittering pieces of it strewn about before her as her eye-line shifted haltingly from the body seated on the ground to the body in the wheelchair nearby. 

Dahlia was nearby. A woman approached. She heard Harry's voice, and Kaufmann's. Whether these were real or images from a dream Alessa could not tell and did not care. Swimming in her head were three sets of memories and three trains of thought all weaving in and out and nearly missing each other on three crazily braided tracks. 

Ends up none of the conjurers in this mess were correct. Alessa's soul was not split twice but three times; the dominant psyche, Alessa Gillespe, had freed herself from her body leaving a piece of her behind, then sliced what remained in two to create Cheryl. The nightmare that reigned within the scarred and damaged body had spent fourteen years feeding a seedling god, but it had done so by tormenting the defeated soul of a small child deep within its host. Alessa was too weak to resist the completion spell any longer. Amid the mutter of conversation and confused unintelligible syllables therein, Alessa and Cheryl began to see the part of their soul that had been forgotten by both for all these years.

It was a vessel for memory, the home of the most repressed parts of either of them. It recalled in vivid detail what it felt like to burn to death, the deep emotional scar of being hurt by your mother; realizing you were never loved, never wanted. Here lived the tremendous heartbreak of being utterly used, the full impact of the overwhelming defeat. Finally for the first time both Alessa and Cheryl knew what had happened to them. When their thoughts were finally all one, they were complete.

The spell had worked, the metaphysical body Alessa had been using for so long dissolved. The dark magic fed the young god and healed the damaged body in the chair. Alessa rose in glorious raiment, the Holy Mother, the incubator of god. 

Being complete was not really a feeling, it was so natural that she barely noticed it. Deep inside she could feel the moving of the monster she'd been growing. It felt like she'd swallowed an octopus that was rolling and wringing its tentacles against the walls of her uterus. Like Valtiel she could hear its voice echoing in her head. Its vocalizations removed her from all other things in the world. Time slowed down.

Then she was beaned in the head by a glass bottle. It shattered and her white purity was stained in a sticky red liquid. Like magic balm, the substance snapped her eyes and her mind back into focus. She looked up and saw Kaufmann with a gun. Alessa remembered the conversation she'd had with the man so many years ago and what he'd said about a chemical called Aglaophotis. Harry Mason watched agape as the exorcising substance did it's job and the half-constructed god burst from Alessa's back like a moth rising from a cocoon. The young girl fell to the ground without strength and overhead a battle ensued.

Harry Mason opened fire. He had a deer rifle he'd picked up in the mall and the shots rank out throughout the infinite black space. The nightmare Alessa had been dreaming all this time was real and released on the world.

Alessa's quest for revenge didn't matter anymore, nor did Cheryl's love for her father. This cult and this creature needed to be stopped. Humanity needed protection from the kind of evil born from the rape and destruction of innocence, she could see that now, and when the premature god was shot down, she knew exactly what to do with it.

Harry Mason was a good man. He'd shown love to a child he'd found by the side of the road and braved all the horrors of Silent Hill to save her. She wrapped the fetal god in a baby and presented the baby to him, it was a replacement for the child he'd lost and a gesture of trust. All she kept for herself was the memory that had stayed in her body as her soul roamed. 

The memory of tortured Alessa Gillespie stayed in Silent Hill, haunting it with fog and fiend long after all its people had gone.


	11. Chapter 11

Smoke. 

She was fog. Floating. Drifting. Settling in corners, seeping through cracks in decaying walls, filling basements. She was an essence housing weary thought and malicious memories. She couldn't call herself by any certain name anymore, she was merely a casual resident of this world lording over an abandoned resort town conducting affairs in her own subtly detached way.

There was no distinction between light side and dark side. Dahlia Gillespie was dead, the Flauros was gone and the cult had all but vanished into the prison spaces and sewers under ground. She reached for them, but her smoky tendrils could not travel to their temple. Instead she waited on the surface to ensnare weary travelers unfortunate enough to stumble upon her web.

There were a handful that wandered in from time to time. Runaways some. Out-of-towners. She could communicate with the darkness in their hearts and see all they were. Some of them were innocent and good, like she was once. Part of her wanted to mother these souls and protect them; maybe even play with them. She could identify with the innocent.

Others who came in were running from fear. These people tried to hide in Silent Hill, but found what the fog knew all along; there was no hiding from the horrible things in your past. They find you and you must face them. She could help. She could transform the whole township into what they needed to see. You can't run when your hiding spot finds you. If you needed, she could set the whole world ablaze.

The ones that really stirred her, however, were the guilty ones; people like the four on her hit list who'd escaped punishment for horrible acts. These people she could not abide, they were evil in their cores. She knew what evil was. She remembered her assault and struggle very clearly. Often it was the only thing on her mind. These travelers awakened a devious nature inside her as she picked at their souls, toying with them, pulling ghosts and phantoms from their memories to torture them into an overdue grave. It was always best when they did it themselves; she found it most rewarding that way.

This system of playthings continued for years. The fog wasn't aware of the passage of time, she was a constant; more a presence than a person. The creatures and occultists moved within her like the faint motion of blood beneath the skin. Despite the pain and horrible memory she held she was still serenely content. Then, one foggy day, a man came.

This man; he was different. He carried a guilty soul, but also a naive innocence. He came to Silent Hill looking for his wife, his heart full of love and grief and his soul haunted with faceless phantoms. He brought with him such a strong love... he reminded her of her father.

It was then that the memory of Alessa Gillespie started to awaken. She could see this man in colors and hear his voice in intelligible words. He wasn't really like her father at all besides being a man in his thirties searching for someone he loved. In actuality he was much more like her mother – with a selfish side and blind determination toward a boldly impossible goal, but her mother didn't have the same spirit to her. What he really was, she decided, was what she wished her Mother could have been; James Sunderland was sorry and Alessa wanted to help him make things right.

Unfortunately, James also possessed a firm case of denial. If he was to find absolution he'd have to own up to what he'd done. He needed guidance and he wanted to be judged. Alessa knew just what to send him.

She held within her the memory of a painting hung on the wall of the Historical Society – the one of Silent Hill's ancient executioners. A man in a large red hood with bodies strung all around him. She remembered vaguely the presence of such a creature with her; someone who protected and looked after her. He was a creature that appeared from nowhere just when she needed him and he was the strong arm of punishment on all those who deserved it. Silent Hill had given her a monster that was everything she needed, so out of the goodness of her heart, she gave James one as well.

James' adventures were many. His monsters chased him through the mazes of his mind. Alessa populated the place with faceless ghouls and provoking images. The more stubborn he got the more blatantly she responded until finally he understood what he'd done. Finally he was able to face the price of his actions. He realized everything she'd done for him - even thanked her in a way - and took matters into his own hands to find his own flavor of justice. She was content and for the first time in her series of wanders, lovingly, she let him go...

She had him to thank. He didn't know it, but James had turned the lights of her mind back on. Alessa could remember her name; she remembered her father and her mother and the events that led her to this state. She remembered that most of her was still out there somewhere concealing the evil god that had given her this power and thanks to James if she ever returned, Alessa would have the drive and awareness to deal with her. A decade of sitting idly in this town was for a purpose.


	12. Chapter 12

The Cult had come to calling her the Holy Mother. It made sense to glorify her with Claudia in charge – she'd worshiped Alessa even before she'd been given dark powers. Now she was more of a god than anyone in the cult imagined. Still it was not a glorified existence.

Alessa could feel her flesh far off, growing and maturing without her beyond the fog. She could feel the satanic god Samael growing as well. His fetal form gestated within her womb the same way his monsters moved within the belly of Silent Hill. He was growing stronger, but so was she and she intended to stop him using the same methods her mother had taught her so long ago.

Samael was a mortal god as long as he was not fully mature at birth. Harry Mason and the power of Aglaophotis had aborted him once. Now she'd use her own otherworldly powers to finish the job for good. 

But Samael was far away, safe within the flesh of Alessa's body while the power of her nightmare lay confined in Silent hill. Alessa needed someone to pull the strings for her on the outside - someone to use as a tool the way Dahlia used Harry twenty-four years ago. But it couldn't be a stranger like James Sunderland; Harry was already wholly dedicated to his goal when he was recruited. Alessa's servant needed to be willing to commit unspeakable acts without question. There was of course only one candidate.

Claudia Wolf was praying in the depths of the town. She spoke in religious jargon and blind faith like a miniature Dahlia Gillespie, a similarity both disgusting and advantageous. Alessa was drawn to her as she prayed, her prostrate form framed by blood-painted etchings on the marble floor of her church.

"God give me strength," Claudia said on her knees. The aged black gown she wore was crinkled into the dust beneath her in the center of the Halo of the Sun. The Halo amplified Alessa's power; the same way the Seal of Metatron canceled it. The were two sides of the same supernatural coin. Stirring her.

"Give me strength to be patient," Claudia prayed, "and if it is your wisdom, please help me to find Alessa and bring her home. I know I stepped too far when I hired the investigator to find her, but I am anxious, god, I ask your forgiveness but at the same time hope perhaps my actions were in tune to your service and you will make them fruitful. Guide me how to conduct myself should she be found and bring holy retribution on that evil man who took her from us."

Harry. She was already rushing the process. This would be easy.

Alessa answered her prayer in power. All Alessa was anymore was power. Claudia paused her prayers as the Halo beneath her began to glow red like fire. She gasped and stood, backing up off the symbol in slight panic, stopping with her back against the door to keep herself from escaping. 

Alessa looked into her heart to fish for the shape of the monster she needed. She needed something strong and obedient. Something faceless and powerful. An executioner. Alessa stopped herself.

No. Claudia didn't deserve that. Perhaps she deserved the punishment he symbolized, but never would she send her a creature in that form. He was still too precious and close to her heart. She'd not dishonor him by giving him to such a deluded and naively childlike woman.

Instead she called a lumbering oaf with a face stitched like hood with blades like threshing scythes. The creature clawed up through a black rift in the ground without a sound and waited, feet planted and blades hanging loose in his hands. Alessa turned her attention and spoke into the annals of Claudia's mind.

'He's yours.'

Claudia Wolf felt a surge of energy flow through her, her heart raced and fingers trembled. She looked at the monster with wonder and stepped forward, fear erased, "mine?"

'You can command him, my sister. You can complete it.'

"I can!" Claudia marveled. Boldly the held her palm toward the monster. The creature dropped to one knee and bowed to her. Claudia swelled with an amazement that turned quickly to venomous glee. Alessa recognized the look, she'd experienced the same feeling of empowerment long ago as a seven year-old girl on the blood-soaked tile of the butcher shop. Was she no different than Claudia back then? They were both tools of the Order, used by some higher power to awaken the mortal form of a wicked god, mistreated and abandoned then given the gift of a monster to aid her in their bloody revenge.

An impressionable soul spoken to out of the ages. A person too immature to wield a power thrust upon them. Blind. A child abused and neglected by a parent. A soul stuck in limbo between some amorphous and mythical heaven and the torment of this manifested hell. 

They really were the same, she and Claudia. Exactly the same. In all ways. Perhaps... perhaps it was not a coincidence. Claudia was not bound by the gates of Silent Hill. More than this one monster, she could take all the roaring evils of the underworld with her. Alessa was tired; worn thin and weary, she happily passed on what was so ungladly given to her...

"Arise my soldier!" Claudia cried triumphantly to the monster. The walls shook and blackened with her power. Alessa receded and let the new heir of darkness stretch the tendrils of her influence, "You'll be my missionary! Together we will take the true power of god to the unbelieving world!"

Claudia would never be as powerful as Alessa had been, but the fire burning in her heart told Alessa she'd do fine. Claudia would bring the child known as Cheryl – Alessa's wandering flesh - home to Silent Hill no matter the cost. No price was too great to stop the birth of the demon god. Claudia may even die in the process, but Alessa welcomed death in exchanged for her fragmented purgatory. 

Of all the things they shared in common, Alessa sent her own prayer that Claudia would not also inherit a similar torture.


End file.
